There is always baseball happening — almost too much baseball for one person to follow themselves.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help you by figuring out what you missed but shouldn’t have. Here are all the best moments from the weekend in Major League Baseball:
Pirates sweep the Dodgers
The Dodgers had already lost the first two games of their series with the Pirates, so you would think that their chances of losing a third were low, as far as these things go. There was one 6-foot-6, 260-lb. problem with playing the odds here, however, and his name is Paul Skenes.
Skenes twirled six shutout innings against Los Angeles, striking out 8 while allowing just 2 hits and a single walk for the day. He kicked off his start by striking out Shohei Ohtani, and didn’t ever let up from there.
The win put him over .500 with a 10-9 record, which is as unfathomable at this point as the fact that he was, at one point, 4-8 with a 2.01 ERA in mid-July. Skenes’ shutout frames dropped his ERA for the season to an MLB-leading 1.98: sure, it was lower in his rookie 2024, at 1.96, but he threw 133 innings that season. He qualifies for the ERA title this year, and also his career mark to this point is 1.97 over 306 innings. That’s pretty good.
Just horrible timing for the Dodgers to have this happen, especially in conjunction with the Padres getting swept by the Orioles this week. Instead of putting some space between themselves and San Diego, the two teams are still just 2.5 games apart in the NL West. The Padres have lost three series in a row and dropped all of 1.5 games in the standings in that stretch. The last series that San Diego won? Why, that was against the Dodgers, from Aug. 22-24.
Los Angeles will now face the Orioles, while the Padres take on the Rockies, the team that was just swept by the Giants. So maybe it’s San Francisco that wants to win the NL West! They are seven games back of the Dodgers at the moment, though, with 22 games to go, so we’re probably just stuck with the current chase unless one of Los Angeles or San Diego remembers how to win some games. The next W from either of them will be their first in September.
30 for Grisham
It wasn’t yet another grand slam, but Trent Grisham didn’t make anyone wait long for his first-ever 30-homer season. In an 8-4 win against the Astros that allowed the Yankees to take the series, Grisham went 2-for-3 with 3 RBIs and 2 runs, with much of that courtesy of this 3-run dinger.
He’s now batting .247/.355/.485 on the season, and while the expectation for a bit there was that Grisham was just having a hot streak to start the year — a feeling buoyed by a .229/.340/.349 June — he’s actually having a better second half of 2025 than first half. The Yankees’ outfielder is batting .241/.358/.519 over his last 44 games and 187 plate appearances.
Alvarez gets 4 hits, again
While the Astros did lose, there was a real bright spot. Yordan Alvarez posted his second 4-hit game in a row.
He had a rough start to the season, batting an uncharacteristic .210/.306/.340 through May 2 before landing on the IL with a fracture in his right hand. Since his return on Aug. 26, however, Alvarez has looked a lot more like the guy who has anchored the Astros’ lineup since arriving in 2019 as a 22-year-old: he’s batting .500/.595/.786 with two doubles and two homers in those nine games.
You don’t need us to tell you that Alvarez won’t hit .500 the rest of the season, but he’s been so good in this short stretch that his season line is now .273/.373/.438. It looks like his power is back, too, so that slugging will climb even further in no time. That’s going to be huge for Houston in October, assuming they get there: the Astros are currently 3.5 games up on the Mariners despite losing this series to New York.
Peralta’s MLB-leading scoreless streak
The Brewers lost to the Phillies — and lost the series, too — but it’s tough to point the finger at Freddy Peralta for any of that. He threw five scoreless frames against the Phillies’ formidable offense, striking out 8 of them against 3 walks while scattering 2 hits. That extended Peralta’s scoreless streak to 29 innings, the longest in MLB this season.
Now, there is still blame to go around: the bullpen allowed a pair of runs in their four innings of work, and the Brewers’ offense was nowhere to be found against Philadelphia’s pitching. Granted, the Phillies broke out the big guns for this one: Ranger Suarez lowered his ERA to 2.89 with his 6 scoreless innings, and then Philadelphia managed to trot out three relievers in a row who also had sub-3 ERAs. They aren’t exactly flush with those guys, so, tough draw for Milwaukee here.
The Brewers are still 5.5 up on the Cubs in the NL Central and have the best record in the both the National League and the majors as a whole. They have 11 more wins than the current last wild card team, the Mets. They are in a great place despite this series loss, is what we’re getting at. The Phillies aren’t quite as secure, but they are still six games up on the Mets, who are themselves four games up on the Giants, so things are looking pretty good in Philly with 22 to go, as well.
Rays have won 7 straight
As for teams that do have a chance to upset the order of things, the Rays began a series with the Guardians on Thursday, and ended up winning their seventh game in a row. Ryan Pepiot throwing a scoreless start stands out, but credit to the non-Pete Fairbanks parts of the bullpen for holding the Guardians scoreless until the ninth, as well, allowing the four runs generated by Tampa Bay’s offense to be more than enough to hold on against the late surge.
The Rays are looking a lot more like the team that was threatening the Yankees’ postseason hopes earlier in the season of late, and now sit all of two games back of the Mariners for the final wild card in the American League.
Part of that is because three of the Ws in this streak came at the expense of Seattle — that’s who the Rays were playing prior to this Guardians set. Now, nothing is guaranteed here by any means, but unlike Cleveland — they have been outscored by 56 runs this season — and the Royals — better, but still a -7 run differential — the Rays are a believable threat to the Mariners. The Rangers haven’t vanished yet, either, and are actually the closest to unseating Seattle, as they are 1.5 back.
Of course, anything can happen in the span of a few weeks: it doesn’t matter if the Rays or Rangers or Mariners are better than the Royals over the course of 162 at this point, but if they can be better than Kansas City over the rest of September. If the Mariners don’t pick up the pace soon, we might actually have a fight for a postseason spot in the AL.
Royals come from behind to win
Those Royals aren’t giving up just yet, either. On Thursday, they had a come-from-behind victory over the Angels that gained them half-a-game in the standings against the idle Mariners — Kansas City is just two back of Seattle.
Salvador Perez tied things up in the seventh with one swing of the bat after Los Angeles scored 3 runs in the first off of Noah Cameron, who otherwise kept the Angels’ bats quiet in his five innings of work.
That was Perez’s 24th long ball of the year, and 297th of his career. Just seven primary catchers in MLB history have at least 300 long balls, and Perez is three away from making it eight.
Perez tied it up, but it was Bobby Witt Jr.’s blast in the eighth that put the Royals ahead, and to stay.
Witt probably isn’t logging another 30 homer, 30 stolen base season — that was his 21st dinger of the year — but he is batting .295/.354/.506 with 41 doubles. He’s having a pretty great season even without making this a third-straight 30/30 campaign. And it will be an even better one if his bat can help Kansas City make it to the postseason for the second year in a row.
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